Aston Villa defender Jores Okore and winger Tonev have an outside chance of featuring in Aston Villa’s friendly against Shamrock Rovers. Okore suffered a hamstring injury during Villa’s tour in Germany while Tonev has sustained a thigh injury. Both players haven’t trained nor played since, but are set to return to training towards the end of the week.

“We’ll have to see how they are in the next couple of days, but they’re doing really well with it and making progress. They’re doing really well,” said boss Paul Lambert.

“Hopefully Aleksandar and Jores will maybe train Friday and then we will see how they are for the game.

“They are two big players for us who will hopefully come back shortly.

“Next up is Shamrock Rovers. We want to get more minutes under the belts of the players and hopefully get no injuries. Then there’s one more after that.”

It’s a shame that both are out injured, Okore definitely needed some game time to begin working with Vlaar and begin to develop a good communication between the two centre-backs. Okore is arguably our most exciting and most rated signing so it’s a shame that he got injured so quickly. Same can be said about Tonev, we haven’t seen to much of the winger but he has quality and will provide the club with a lot more width.

Herd and Albrighton remain injured, Herd’s injury isn’t so serious but will be out for a bit. Albrighton is most likely going to be out longer than expected, which is a shame because I do want to see more of the winger.